Mages, ten-man raiding, and other things that are awesome.

Archive for the ‘Art’ Category

Tuesday Art Day: More Mini-Sketches

You might remember on my anniversary post I was giving away freebies, of sorts. Here are some that didn’t make it into the first batch or that I’ve finished since! If you requested one and I’ve missed you, maybe you could call my attention to it? I had folks who wanted one but didn’t share an armory link and I’ve gotten a bit confused keeping the comments all straight.

Anyway, mini-sketches, 5-minutes each, you know the drill.

In somewhat related news, you can see the gentlemanly murloc I did for Zelmaru over at Murloc Parliament and check out her snazzy new layout while you’re at it!

Rades and Beru each wrote posts that were tear-jerkers for different reasons – Beru’s a moving story of success, Rades’ a lament for a lost friend.

Also, my friend Liala featured me in her comic, Disciplinary Action – after I complained that there was a serious lack of draenei representation. She set out to teach me that the cliche is true – you really do have to be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.

There’s no patch tomorrow, unfortunately. I’ve never anticipated a patch quite so eagerly – I really want those new meta gems. How about you, are you looking forward to the patch for any reason or wish it wouldn’t come? Voss observed cheerfully, “Well, that just means I get another week of being OP!” He has a way of looking on the bright side.

Some Mini-Sketches To Finish The Week

Make that an Art Friday, I suppose. Here are some mini-sketches I’ve done since yesterday for people. I imposed a strict five-minute time limit on them.

Things I have learned:

  • Five minutes isn’t very much time, and
  • there are many awesome folks who read here.

Thank you for all your kind wishes and words, even if you were one of the folks trying not to seem demanding and so deliberately not leaving an armory link.

In no particular order – if you see a character that looks like yours, it’ll have the name written on it if you need to be sure. Have a great weekend, folks!

Tuesday Art Day: Wildhammer and Link Love

I feel both guilty and gleeful about the look on the fish's face. The answers to the question, "What does a dwarf feed her gryphon?" were pretty awesome, incidentally, and ranged from "dead orc heads" to...well, fish. You're probably happy I chose the former.

I know that art day posts are a bit boring (what do you say about them?) so I’m combining two time-honored traditions, art day AND link love. I’ve had some links stored away in my file for several weeks now, so it’s time to get caught up! This was a sketch that strong-armed its way into becoming a semi-paint, it’s still a bit rough but for a warm-up sketch, I’m happy with it! (That’s two and a half hours of warming up, by the way).

Without further ado, link love!

Cynwise wrote a great post about warlock CC, if you’re into that kind of thing, but many of the tips and macros could be re purposed easily to apply to mages or most any other class. It’s a good read!

In a similar vein, Ophelie over at The Bossy Pally wrote about all the types of CC there are. I suppose some people feel now that CC is no longer necessary in heroics and everything has become an AoE zerg-fest, but for many of the tougher pulls we’re still CCing. It doesn’t take long and it makes life easier for everyone!

I enjoyed Spinks’ short post about the Women of Cataclysm. I’m always happy to see stronger female characters taking a place in WoW! I would hasten to add there are some great Wildhammer characters there too (have you done the quest with the gryphon rider in Deepholm? I won’t spoil it for you, but suffice to say she is tough as nails).

Perhaps you’re back into raiding again, but do you know how your raiders learn new encounters? Kae wrote about this a few weeks ago and I thought it was an interesting read. I’m visual and tactile myself, which means the videos don’t generally work well for me (and the talking in them mostly annoys me). A good diagram and some hands-on experience helps me more than anything.

Finally, this post is old but I happened across it when the topic came up for us the other night. Anexxia’s post The Changing Face of Spirit talks about how the stat fits into Cataclysm gear. Have you decided what your raid is doing about gear with +spirit? It’s something to consider before you are caught unprepared!

Tuesday Art Day: Mishaweha

It seems I took part in quite a few gift exchanges this year; the Blog Azeroth Secret Santa, but also an art exchange on Twitter! The art exchange was especially fun because we found out a month in advance who we’d be drawing for. Here is the piece I did for Mishaweha. You can see all of the art that was done for the exchange here. Thanks again to Loreli who organized the event, I had quite a bit of fun with it.

I think the background took longer than the actual character!

This is Mishaweha, clearly, Tauren shaman (restoration, I believe). She wears goggles. I’ll quite likely use the art I received of Millya in a post at a later date!

Happy Holidays!

I think in this case I’m going to let this picture be a thousand words on its own – my three main characters, doing what they do best. May all your moonkin be airborne in the new year!

"I just have to adjust the trajectory properly..." "I told you, your method is highly unreliable, we'd do much better to..." "AM I FLYING YET, GUYS?"

 

Candy Cane White Chocolate Truffles

Winter Veil is coming, and you all know what that means! It is time for more cooking. Earlier this year we made Unconjured Cinnamon Bun Frost Cookies and Fiery Gromsblood Soup.

Now we’ll be conjuring up some delicious confectioneries. Well, you aren’t going to conjure them, you’re going to make them, but these are so easy that you’ll hardly know the difference! They are perfect for when you want a gift or treat that looks as if you spent a great deal of time to make it – but you really didn’t. (This is a mage recipe, after all. I see no reason for needless expenditure of effort). This recipe will make about twenty-four truffles.

Candy Cane White Chocolate Truffles

Here’s what you are going to need:

You won’t need this done until later, but you’ll thank me for telling you before you start! The first thing you have to do is crush your candy canes. This can be accomplished through various means; there are some shattering spells, frost spells that can do this. Sometimes the results can be disastrous, though. Please exercise extreme caution. If you do not have access to spells for this purpose, you will have to crush the canes manually. Put them into a bag.

Candy canes!

Make sure the bag is very secure. You can use a rolling pin or a meat mallet to gently tap the canes and break them apart, rolling over them as they get smaller. They should be finely crushed. Take care when asking for any assistance at this step that your kitchen assistant is not… overzealous. I speak from experience.

What in Velen’s name…

So. Now you have some finely crushed candy canes. If you’re fortunate, you don’t have candy cane shrapnel spread the length and breadth of your entire kitchen… If you’re unfortunate, find a warrior to clean up this ridiculous mess (then crush the replacement candy canes yourself). Take the candy cane bits and place them in a shallow dish.

Now you are ready to begin: put your chopped white chocolate in a bowl. Apply a little heat to the bottom…

Only a very LITTLE heat.

Oh. You can’t just cast a “hot hands,” spell? Well, you could… um, I don’t know…Find a mage to do it for you. (If you have access to a magic heat box microwave thing, microwave it for one minute). The chocolate should be almost but not quite melted! Stir it until it’s smooth, then set it aside to cool a little bit.

Take your Boulderslide Cheese (it should be softened, so let it get to room temperature first) and beat it thoroughly until it’s smooth. Add the chocolate and beat the two together until they’re smooth.

Add one cup of your Oshu’gun Crystal Powder to the mixture and blend it in. You can just let the spoon do this itself and go off to do other things.

Starting to make a dough.

Once that’s mixed, add the rest of the crystal powder and mix it some more. It should form a soft dough at this point and be fairly easy to manipulate. Use a spoon to scoop out consistent amounts of the dough, form them into balls and gently roll them in your candy cane powder! This works best if you do not take too long about it – the heat from your hands can make the dough a bit sticky, but that’s okay.

Set your truffles on a piece of parchment as you complete them and chill, with a spell or in the icebox. Once they’ve chilled you can put them in a container, but it’s best to keep them cool until you are ready to eat them.

Ta-da!

They are delightful little morsels. Depending on the size of your candy canes and whether they are allowed to grow warm, sometimes the candy cane colour can run a bit. This will not affect their taste.

Mmm, truffles.

I hope you enjoy the truffles! We usually enjoy them so thoroughly that I make a double batch. You can use candy canes that have green, red and white if you like, or simply the red and white ones, it’s up to you!

Actual truffles.

I hadn’t made these this year myself until just last night, so now I have a photo of the real thing to add.

Tuesday Art Day: Quaras

Because you can never have too many draenei. This was a gift commissioned from Snack for his fiancee Melisan and they are getting married very soon! So I think it’s like a wedding gift, sort of – on my part, that is. A little. Anyhow, here you have it:

"This is my BAN hammer." No, not really.

I’ve been trying to work on incorporating backgrounds into my work more often (witness this, and the last Tuesday art day, also a draenei paladin.) I think it’s an endeavour that’s been going well so far!

I’m working on a WoW-themed Christmas card that will be sure to make an appearance here, as well as a Secret Santa art exchange between other Twitter folks. It’s very exciting. I love and hate secrets all at the same time.

Meantime, I hear something happened to Azeroth last night… like five years of time lapse and Deathwing. Doubtless I’ll have some things to say about that this week. I’ve spent my initial time in Azeroth pretty much acquiring Withers and then playing Plants vs Zombies: WoW Edition before I had to call it a night. I’ll confess, I’m really not that good at Plants vs Zombies.

Monday Linking Love

I have another edition of linking love for your Monday – welcome to the week! (I’m not actually that chipper, but by gosh, I am trying!) I’m even writing this a day early because I know it’s not going to happen tomorrow morning, that’s for sure.

First up, Anafielle at Righteous Defense has a message for Low Level Paladin tanks. (Voss thinks the message is “roll a warrior instead,” but I think he may have a slight bias).

ArcaneTinkerTank at Murloc Parliament has some advice for getting your financial house in order for the coming Cataclysm. It’s pretty simple, really – and yet I still have more junk in my alt guild than I’m willing to admit to!

Cayleb from Bubble Hearth is starting an interesting new leveling experiment - The Ethical Alt. I have something of a soft spot for these kinds of leveling experiments, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens as he progresses!

For anyone wondering what the upcoming patch entails and confused about all the announced changes and what’s going on – Beru at Falling Leaves and Wings has a post breaking it down. It’s simple and no frills. Just the facts, ma’am!

This is a sketch. This is only a sketch. This has been a sketch of the emergency image for a blog post needed system. Had this been a real drawing...I probably would have coloured the bottom of her robe.

I am a big fan of the series Pewter at The ‘Mental Shaman has been writing about World of Warcraft fan art. This past week she tackled the representation of Troll women. I have to admit that I find myself thinking more carefully about what I draw and how I draw it since Pewter got me thinking about it. Well worth a read!

Shintar at Priest With A Cause is getting into the Cataclysm events. Now that’s what I call an invasion!

Linedan from Achtung Panzercow discovered new meaning in the Crusader Bridenbrad questline. Read about it in his post I Feel For The Guy, But… Even before this I knew Linedan and I would have to agree to disagree about Bridenbrad and his quest chain. I have always really enjoyed it and couldn’t quite say why.

Finally, I have a new guest post up at Sword and Board for people who like lowbie warrior tanking stuff. The posts there take me much longer to write generally – and Voss tries to include helpful information.

All of that ought to give you plenty to read while you’re having much-needed morning coffee!

Tuesday Art Day: Talwen

Back at Pugging Pally I used to do art posts fairly often. I think it’s a fine tradition that I wouldn’t mind continuing!

Here is a commission I just recently finished for a friend of Lara‘s. This is her draenei paladin, Tal, and she is awesome (if I do say so myself). The armour was conceived of by her and assembled/altered by the two of us with our brainstorming; it’s a combination of the Tier 8 paladin set combined with Tier 6 (shoulders and crown). I changed the colours of those pieces so that they would look as if they were part of the T8 set.

Because you all know how I feel about draenei. Draenei. Are. Awesome!

So that is thing one; I always enjoy sharing some art I’ve been working on! Secondly, I have written a guest post that is the probable first in a series of guest posts for Vosskah over at Sword and Board. Yes, that’s right, Vosskah, infamous raid leader and utterer of French expletives! Those of you who have been sad I don’t write about pugging as much may like this series, because…

I made a warrior.  And all she’s been doing is tanking (ulp). Meantime, Voss provides useful information about tanking. I think it’s a fun combination, especially for anyone else who may be interested in leveling lowbie warrior tanks. That’s something that Vid was always lacking as she leveled – I couldn’t tell people about good choice to make because I really was just figuring it out as I went along. Unlike me, Voss knows what he is doing.

It may take my little warrior a long time to level this way, but the journey promises to be a nerve-wracking one. Mosey over and read Looking To Be A Great Warrior? if you are so inclined!

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